I know. I went to the wake. After the TechShop failure, the TheShop failure, and the Maker Faire failure, there was a meeting in Sunnyvale where some of the people responsible made excuses. There was a speaker who'd bought the remnants of Heathkit. But they'd gone retro, re-issuing old kits.[1]
TechShop used the business mode of a gym - people sign up, pay a fixed monthly fee, and show up occasionally or not at all. It didn't work. Gyms can get away with way overselling memberships. Most people come a few times a week, max. Usually less. Gym equipment is rugged and not complicated.
None of this is true of a workshop. The people who will pay $100-$200 a month want to use the shop. For some, it's their primary workplace. Machine tools are maintenance-intensive and have many consumables. So the operating costs per customer are far higher.
TechShop, as we customers found out in the bankruptcy, was never profitable. The San Francisco location was said to be, but that's because it was assigned the revenue for the other two bay area locations. The business model was very Silicon Valley - lose money while growing, plan to dominate the industry and eventually make a profit. Didn't work.
It's not impossible to do this, but you need cheap land. This usually means some kind of subsidy, often being part of some publicly-funded facility such as a library or school.
I know. I went to the wake. After the TechShop failure, the TheShop failure, and the Maker Faire failure, there was a meeting in Sunnyvale where some of the people responsible made excuses. There was a speaker who'd bought the remnants of Heathkit. But they'd gone retro, re-issuing old kits.[1]
TechShop used the business mode of a gym - people sign up, pay a fixed monthly fee, and show up occasionally or not at all. It didn't work. Gyms can get away with way overselling memberships. Most people come a few times a week, max. Usually less. Gym equipment is rugged and not complicated.
None of this is true of a workshop. The people who will pay $100-$200 a month want to use the shop. For some, it's their primary workplace. Machine tools are maintenance-intensive and have many consumables. So the operating costs per customer are far higher.
TechShop, as we customers found out in the bankruptcy, was never profitable. The San Francisco location was said to be, but that's because it was assigned the revenue for the other two bay area locations. The business model was very Silicon Valley - lose money while growing, plan to dominate the industry and eventually make a profit. Didn't work.
It's not impossible to do this, but you need cheap land. This usually means some kind of subsidy, often being part of some publicly-funded facility such as a library or school.
[1] https://shop.heathkit.com/shop